


Born for Me

by sinnerrific



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Favoritism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Leon and Hop's Family, M/M, Multi, Possibly Implied Incest/Incestuous Thoughts, postgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21857593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnerrific/pseuds/sinnerrific
Summary: "L…Leon?" Hop whimpered, hating how weakly the sound came out in his own ears."Mum misses me. Of course she does. Why doesn't she missyou?"Leon asked, in a shaking, grieving voice that was paradoxically too loud and too quiet in Hop's ears.
Relationships: implied Dande | Leon/Hop, implied Hop/Masaru | Victor
Comments: 9
Kudos: 197





	Born for Me

**Author's Note:**

> one-shot. maybe more, though possibly featuring a different scenario with the same ship(s) bc these sibs and hop/victor just wreck me
> 
> ETA: oops turns out I cut off the last line, re-added it back some………5-8 hours after original upload. luckily it works fine either way, but if you came back after reading the story right after uploading, well there's another sentence now.

Losing his final match of the Poké Ball tier of the Battle Tower hadn't been exactly unexpected.

It had hurt, yes; but considering Hop's opponent, it was hardly a surprise.

What _was_ a surprise was what Leon said to him afterward: the words came right after the match, right as Leon was recalling the preening, rental Cinderace that was still smugly celebrating its single shot KO on Hop's own borrowed Clefable, leaving him out of usable Pokémon against a stronger opponent just like so many times before.

That part didn't hurt. It was…

Hop knew how to lose, now. If Leon could do it, even, then so could he. Hop had found his own purpose in life, and even if nothing quite compared to battling, he didn't need to win his matches to get fired up.

Until Leon spoke. And Hop's blood, all of a sudden, turned to ice at his brother's words:

"You should never have come here."

Hop—who had been staring mournfully down at the unfamiliar Poké Ball of the knocked-out Clefable, with a thought that he'd both failed to bring out its full potential and give it a satisfying battle—snapped his head up in surprise.

His older brother was staring at him with hard, blazing yellow eyes and his expression was inscrutable.

_You should never have come here._

The words echoed clearly for the first time in his mind, finally registering for what they were beyond a doubt, and the world fell right out of alignment in all of a moment at the uncharacteristic words of cruelty.

Hop felt odd and floaty. His stomach dropped, falling somewhere down into his feet with his shoes.

Surely he must have misheard him?

"Leon—" he started, and was cut off with the bluntness of a kitchen knife.

"You shouldn't have come here," Leon repeated. His tone was brusque and unkind, and he folded his arms staring at Hop without exactly meeting his yellow eyes. "I thought you were working for Sonia?"

What?

What did that…have to do with…

Hop realized he was expected to answer. To make a defense. To argue against this nightmare.

"I am," he blurted out, "I—I work at, I'm living at the lab now. Instead of back home," Hop clarified, stumbling over his words all too wide-eyed and alarmed. The floor was gone from beneath him; he had no idea what he could say about this or why it mattered, what about this was an issue when he'd simply wanted to test out his brother's incredible new facility and see his face again.

"With Sonia, I mean, Professor Sonia. And, studying. But I sometimes—" Hop struggled for purchase against the wall of blank nothingness that washed over his mind at Leon's inscrutable stare. He scrabbled at words, looking for something, anything relevant to say to continue. To defend himself, from…Leon? "I mean, there's the practice tournaments, and, Victor invited me. And it's in Wyndon, so I thought—"

"You're training to be a, a professor, Hop," Leon said flatly. However, he was pacing, not looking at over at him again. One hand was curled up into a fist at his side, exactly like whenever he lost a match—when he'd lost that match.

Hop only ever saw it happen against Victor.

"I can understand a tourney you were requested by the Champion, that's nonnegotiable," Leon continued irritably, voice layered with a nearly pained impatience or else something close to it, and the sound cut Hop like a knife.

"But why here? This is where I—"

Leon stopped, cutting off as if realizing, how stupid that train of thought was, that they both understood exactly why Hop would follow that trail to its source. So Leon switched back tactics and back to his earlier argument. "You have a job now, you're not a trainer," he rambled on, voice more full of steam than anger or any emotion besides…over-emotion. Something threatening to explode, but it wasn't quite anger. And yet Hop was afraid.

He couldn't. He couldn't lose Leon. He couldn't lose his brother.

But Leon didn't stop talking in that voice that plowed on like he had to keep talking as if words themselves could shove Hop away and out of his sight: "And you have your Legendary Pokémon on your team for protection, now. It can take down the likes of Eternatus. Why even bother with the rental system? This facility is to train. You don't need to keep testing yourself, not the way—" Leon made an aborted sound before finishing whatever he'd meant to say and turned on his heel

He looked at Hop accusingly, with wild eyes full of something desperate Hop couldn't name that had not been present at the start of their match. Hop's heart pounded painfully in his chest.

"Why, Hop? Why did feel the need to come to me here?"

The floaty, disembodied sensation worsened, spreading out to all of him at what as good as was an outright rejection echoing in his ears. Hop swayed where he stood, acutely aware there was a roaring wind that was deafening in his ears.

Because what could he say to that. What could he say, how could he change his mind, how could he even react or go on to Leon saying things like—

"M-Mum misses you," Hop heard himself blurt out stupidly.

The words were distant in his own ears, as if hearing the himself from far away. In his own estimation his voice was entirely too tinny and soft, and small for a trainer of his supposed caliber. The pitch of his tone broke at the start of the sentence and then again near the end, crumpling like a helpless child. So pitiful a sound it was that it dimmed the roaring in Hop's ears, stopping it in all of a moment to leave only the silence, deafening between the two brothers.

Leon's expression screwed up. His face twisted to something like anger, and Hop flinched, but forced himself not to look away—something he wouldn't have had the courage to do before his League challenge had changed, him, steeled his will for the sake of the world. He was surprised when his effort was rewarded with Leon's expression shifting again almost instantaneously, rage collapsing into something like _grief,_ before settling into unfamiliar, uncanny resignation.

"Mum…misses me."

Leon's voice was flat. Monotone. At least to the untrained ear.

But Hop knew that voice better than most, and didn't miss the note of hurt in it, and he had to wonder why that news would bring him pain when anyone could have told him the same thing. It'd been the same story since he won the Galar championship all those years ago. His mother and father and grandfather all bemoaning his brother's absence while lavishing praise upon his accomplishments, and Hop himself was of course no different.

And selfishly, Hop couldn't help but wander from that old story despite his brother's suffering. His mind was still in panic mode, after all. He'd never been more afraid that he could recall, not when Galar was on the brink of an energy crisis there would be no coming back from.

Is he still mad at me? was all he could think, all he could wonder in that moment with his heart in his throat. Does he still want me not to be here? Does he hate me?

…Oh. Leon had asked him a question. Desperate not to fail, like this was a test, another Gym Challenge, Hop hurried belatedly to blurt out the answer.

"Y-Yeah," Hop said at once, struggling to speak when he couldn't breathe. He swallowed, twiddling with the hem of his shirt, trying to count and talk at the same time to calm down, to pray he was having a nightmare. "At least, th-that's what Victor said. From, uh. The last time he visited. Postwick."

There was another long moment of silence. Too late, Hop wondered if it was worse to his brother that he couldn't even relay the message personally, having to hear it secondhand from a friend. Would Leon be mad at him?

Why? Why was Leon mad at him? How could Hop fix it?

He'd do anything for Leon. Anything, anything—

"Mum misses _me_ ," Leon repeated. Hop looked at him, desperate for a hint at what to do next. The elder's shoulders slumped, the wind gone out of Leon's sails. He looked over at Hop and something in the golden eyes reflecting back his own made the younger boy shudder without breaking eye contact, because there was rage and sorrow in them both that gave him chills from head to toe.

"…And what about you, Hop?"

Hop started at the sound Leon's voice. The words were low, and terribly sad, enough to bring Hop back down to earth to stare dumbly at his brother, who finally approached. Hop looked up at him in terror and hope and desperation and Leon tilted his head, inspecting the younger's face carefully.

Please, Hop thought with desperation. Please don't get rid of me, please don't tell me to go.

"Sonia says you're up working day and night," Leon said, his voice deliberative. "You go to the tourneys, when Victor wants you there with him. I've seen you battling, Hop. You've gotten better, even working at a new job.

"You're busy. You don't have time to visit home, or you don't make time. Understandable, of course, even despite the distance being a non-issue like it can be here. Sonia's told me how much you put your heart into what you do with her. You live closer to home than anyone we know, and yet…

"Victor's seen our family more than either of us."

It was true. Hop didn't dare to breathe as Leon kept looking him over, clearly waiting for something. Hop prayed for forgiveness, wanted nothing more than for Leon to tell him what was wrong, what Hop had done wrong. If Hop needed to visit home more since Leon was clearly too far like before, if he needed to comfort their mother before earning the right to see _him_ —

"So," Leon said, startling Hop yet again when he saw his older brother: there was no telling when it had started but the latter was _trembling_ , head to toe, aura exuding some cross of grief and rage. "We're both busy people. We haven't been home. Victor's told me, too. He visits the tower plenty. I've heard about how this family of ours won't shut up about me _still_ , about me visiting, about this tower I built partly just to get Rose's scummy techno-terrorism for sure out of every floor, talking about much _I've_ done. Even though I'm not the goddamn Champion anymore. They just don't stop. They say, oh, yeah, Hop must certainly see how great Leon is even now."

Hop was terrified. He'd never heard his brother swear, never heard Leon talk like this.

"L…" he attempted weakly, unable to articulate properly, "L…Le…"

Leon finally drew the distance between them closed, towering over him. Hop's vision whited out around the edges in a moment of pure panic, a single train of thought repeating through his mind over and over: he's disowning me, he's disavowing me, he's going to tell me to leave and never come back, he doesn't want me anymore…

And then just as suddenly there were familiar, powerful arms crushing him in an embrace that nearly left him breathless; and a warm, trembling body wrapped around him like a vise.

"Hop. God, _Hop,"_ Leon mumbled inarticulately into his brother's hair. Leon was holding him now so tightly that Hop's ribs ached; he couldn't breathe.

"L…Leon?" he whimpered. Hating how weakly the sound came out in his own ears.

"Mum misses me. Of course she does. Why doesn't she miss _you?_ " Leon asked, in a shaking, grieving voice that was paradoxically too loud and too quiet in Hop's ears.

And the question swept the floor out from beneath Hop's feet so suddenly, he knew he'd have had his legs give out from under him if Leon weren't holding him up so securely in his arms.

He hadn't…Hop hadn't thought…their mother. Their whole family, even…

"You—You helped save the world, Hop," Leon choked out, a complete 180 from the coldness of before that Hop realized now had been a dam waiting to burst. "You and Victor both. I couldn't do that. Hell, I broke even the promises I made to you a hundred times over; I don't deserve to…to have you like this anymore."

Hop didn't have time to think about that before Leon went on in an angry, emotional outburst: "No one, no one in our family deserves to call you one of us, and yet they don't even try. I know you wouldn't remember, but I swore I'd always take care of you, you were my responsibility, I'd win the world for you.

"And then you ended up saving all of us. All of Galar. And even Victor noticed, he was _angry_ when he told me, they—he doesn't know all of what happened but even he can tell, they're so goddam blind, they still don't want you. They still think _I'm_ somehow worth a damn, and I couldn't even stop Rose without you and Victor. I was the one that got my team nearly killed, made you two deal with everything alone that happened after…you're just a kid. You're just kids. I'm as bad as—"

Hop felt something re-fracture in him he hadn't recalled being broken, had put back together so many times it felt whole but now it was open and bleeding. He hadn't known Leon felt like that.

Leon, of all people. Leon, practically the greatest.

Hop shook his head frantically and clung back to his brother tight. "No no no no no—" he cried out, desperate to make the rambling words of his brother stop, to make Leon stop saying it.

Tearing down the facade of their cozy family family, all of it, their familiar house with the cheery yard and their childhood rooms as a place where each of the two still held as much of a claim to a home when it had only ever been Leon's fame that let his adoration of Hop grant him something of the same privileges, soften their attitudes, make things into a facsimile of how they should have been when the two of them were smaller and growing up.

But more so, Hop wanted to stamp down on the idea Leon had that the elder could ever, ever believe himself so low as to be less than just… _Hop_.

Hop needed _him_. Hop had always wanted to be like him.

He didn't even remember what supposed broken promises Leon was talking about.

"Shut up," Hop cried out. And when Leon tried to protest, he frantically shook his head. "You're Leon. You're _amazing!_ I don't care what happened. You're always my hero too—you're the person that mattered most. Always. Since I was—"

Hop cut off as he realized he couldn't finish the sentence.

…There was never a time when it hadn't been.

Leon laughed weakly. His throat had tucked his brother's securely beneath, resting over Hop's unruly hair. But the sound of the laughter was hollow.

"You…you don't even remember why, Hop. You don't know how bad I fucked up. What a failure I really am."

Hop didn't. But he knew it couldn't be so bad as Leon thought. He hiccuped, saying nothing but shaking his head against the words.

"You shouldn't be here. You should be with Victor. With your career. You should be—"

"No," Hop mumbled into Leon's chest.

"No, _you_ , Hop," Leon countered, so, so uncharacteristically choked up. Like a stranger from the Leon Hop knew, the Leon that was confident always.

"I'm the reason—I was the one that—" Leon gave several false starts, trying to get across what he needed to say and then gave up.

Instead he made a raw noise and unexpectedly pressed his brother into an even tighter hug, a gesture so desperate and painful and possessive that Hop had to outright gasp for breat at the way Leon squeezed his ribcage so tightly it actually hurt.

Leon pulled him to the side just a bit, so that his mouth was nearer to the shell of his ear.

 _"You were born for me,"_ Leon whispered into his hair. The words crept eerily, with a tingling sensation, all the way down Hop's spine, down to the tips of his fingers and toes. He felt strange, nearly hypnotized despite his pounding heart just listening to Leon speak…

"I wanted you. A little brother. So much," Leon said, his words soft and finally composed. "I was…supposed to be the only. Their perfect star. But, that was why, too; I always got what I wanted. I was their perfect prodigy.

"They gave in. I got you. You were perfect. I didn't know how unhappy they were about there being two of us until…" Leon's breath caught in Hop's ears, the older boy remembering something, violent and tumultuous. "…until I saw how they were with you, and…and…

"But I wasn't going to stand for it," Leon said more firmly, if still clearly shaken. "I tried to make up for it. I did. I made it so you were my responsibility from then on."

He pulled Hop, if possible, even closer, and his voice was deadly soft: "You were _mine_."

Hop didn't know exactly when he stopped breathing. Something was at the back of his mind, a memory, or a glut of memories, maybe. Not exactly…suppressed, but painful enough, to go untouched long enough to be nearly, truly forgotten.

There'd been so many happier ones when he was older. To take their place.

"I promised. I swore it, Hop. I'd always be the one…I'd always, always watch over you," Leon said, and Hop shivered at the tone of his voice without knowing why. "I'd always be there for you."

And then, Hop's heart unexpectedly lurched, unpleasant and anxious: because in the next moment Leon let out an awful, reminiscing laugh. The younger brother felt with a start the sensation of tears dripping onto his hair.

"And then…"

_No_

No no no

"And then I left."

And Hop knew what came in the story next.

Hop screwed his eyes shut. He shook his head as much as he could at the angle where he was pressed fast still against Leon's chest. Trying desperately not to remember.

The year he had survived. 

**Author's Note:**

> talkiing to hop's family postgame sure is disappointing huh


End file.
